Sandra Grunwaldt: Hello, this is Sandy Grunwaldt, and I am a member of the Total Rewards Team at San Juan Regional Medical Center, and I am grateful to join you today to talk to you a little bit about our Employee Assistance Program. It is a wonderful benefit available to all employees and even family members. So with that, you might be wondering what exactly is an Employee Assistance Program?

It is something we offer that is free, confidential, and they call them counseling services to all employees and their families who are or may be experiencing any type of personal or behavioral health challenge. We actually have two different providers of our Employee Assistance Programs, both Jasper & Associates, and new to all of us is UNUM. And I'd love to share what they can help you with if you find yourself in times of challenge.

So, what exactly do they do or offer or provide for us? Balancing work, especially in healthcare, family, personal responsibilities is not always easy. With all of the demands in life, sometimes we can find ourselves in a place where extra support or information or ideas can be very helpful. Our employee assistance program is offered through a couple of services that can be found on our intranet. And these confidential programs provide support and resources to you and even your family members at no charge. Our EAP offers 10 counseling sessions for San Juan Regional Medical Center employees, and actually eight sessions for any of our immediate family members at no charge.

So, what can you use the EAP for? There is a list I can give you. But obviously, you may have your own challenges that could need support or help. So, counseling services through our EAP can be helpful with issues and challenges such as just emotional stress. Are you going through times of significant change, whether it's at work or at home? Do you struggle with depression or anxiety? Even marital issues can be helped by counselors with our employee assistance programs. Family conflicts or work conflicts, have you ever found yourself in a situation where you're not seeing eye to someone, whether in your personal life or your work life? And if you could just have an unbiased outside professional look at it, listen to you, and give you some advice, maybe those conflicts could be resolved, or at least managed in a better way. Are you dealing with grief of any kind? No matter how long, they can help you get through, help you find ways to cope and deal better. Are you dealing with death of a loved one? Someone that you may know that's struggling with drugs or alcohol abuse? It could be you, yourself, could be someone else, and how can you better cope? Do you have anxiety? Not uncommon. Especially after the last few years many of us have lived and survived.

Are you wondering how do you get or request these EAP services? If you are a San Juan Regional employee, or if you have an immediate family member of an employee, you can request an EAP appointment by calling the number listed on the intranet under EAP. And you've got two options now, which is really generous, depending on what service best fits your needs. We have Jasper Associates that can be reached at 815-440-8087 or we have our brand new service that's available to us at 866-799-2485. Our new offering or opportunity, which is available through UNUM called Health Advocate, can also be found on the intranet. They also offer confidential support from EAP professionals who can help you work through personal, family, or work issues so you can feel more balanced and productive.

Support is also available by phone, text, chat, video, or face-to-face, so many options available to fit your very busy lives. They can help identify emotional and mental health issues, strategies to cope, develop a plan to help you feel more in control of a situation where you're not feeling any. They can even help locate support resources such as child care, elder care, and more. They can even help with researching travel, planning events, making reservations, and handling other time-consuming tasks.

So, we have generous offerings through our EAP program. I urge you to search the intranet under Human Resources, Total Rewards, and our EAP programs. I thank you for taking this time today to learn more about ways to help you best manage your very busy life. Thank you.